Forgotten man Lewsey steers Wasps past Bath

If form is infectious then Brian Ashton must hope as few spores of the bug which infected The Rec on Saturday waft up the hill to his training base at Bath University before England start their preparations for Paris this morning. A dose would be a handy for a side that has been off-colour in its second-half performances.

Fortunately for the England coach, six Wasps carriers will be in camp when preparations start in earnest on the hill at Claverham. The difficulty will be keeping the precious virus alive because the partnership that cultured it will be long gone - Ian McGeechan to London and Shaun Edwards down the M4 to continue nursing the Welsh convalescence along.

What the coaching partnership did at half-time remains a mystery, but Wasps emerged rejuvenated, scoring 22 points in 18 minutes of rare quality to end Bath's 15-month unbeaten league run at The Rec.

From 20-13 down Wasps scored three tries - one for James Haskell and two for Josh Lewsey - to go 15 points up, bagging the bonus point that keeps alive slender league hopes. "It was a knockout game for us," said Edwards. "If we had lost we would have been out of the play-offs."

England might also get that shot in the arm because at the heart of the Wasps revival were Tim Payne, Phil Vickery, Simon Shaw, James Haskell, Joe Worsley and Danny Cipriani, all members of the Ashton squad which gathered at their Bath hotel last night. Unaccountably Lewsey, currently the form full-back in the Guinness Premiership and rock-solid under the high ball on Saturday, will not be among the 31 and nor will Tom Palmer, for whom a recall seems only a matter of time.

Not that Bath's England contingent will be totally down in the dumps; Matt Stevens and Michael Lipman kick-started the revival that brought a try bonus point.

Four tries is no mean feat against the Wasps blitz, and Andrew Higgins's opener was only outshone by Cipriani's solo score - the England fly-half ignoring warnings from his coaches about the dangers of chipping the defence to run 60 metres.

But ultimately Bath were undone by forwards such as Vickery and Worsley, who handled neatly to set up Haskell a minute after the restart, and inventive backs such as David Doherty, Dominic Waldouck and Cipriani, who created the spaces that Lewsey ran into in the 47th and 57th minutes.

Bath have never shipped more than 40 points in league rugby at the Rec. As their head coach, Steve Meehan, said: "Defence has been one of our strengths over the last 12 months. In the first 20 minutes of the second half we just didn't get our organisation right. I'm not sure why."

The answer could lie in the alchemy created in the Wasps dressing room and if it infects England's preparations this week Brian Ashton will be a happy man.